Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Please stop bringing sexy back

If Gawker can be trusted (nope!), I know too too much about the secret sexy private life of future-hero and WikiLeaker Julian Assange. If The Guardian can be trusted (maybe?), I have a decent idea of the allegations of sexual coercion and rape that two women have leveled against Assange. And when I just don't think I take any more information about the personal life of the world's blondest journalist, I just learned that Assange has signed a book deal for his memoir.

And as the embattled 39-year-old Australian hacker's lawyers fight his extradition, he'll be working on a memoir. The book will be published in the U.S. by Knopf, a division of Random House, and in the U.K. by Edinburgh-based Canongate.

Canongate publisher Jamie Byng confirmed the news to DailyFinance by email, adding that the U.K. publisher was handling all translation rights. (A spokesperson for Knopf was on vacation and didn't return request for comment.) Caroline Michel of the U.K.-based literary agency Fraser, Peters & Dunlop brokered the English-language book deals, and both publishers expect Assange to deliver a finished manuscript by March, with plans to publish later in 2011.

And, in a less sexy note, the revelations from the WikiLeaks cables continue to mount.